St. Petersburg Day 1

I don't know how long I've wanted to visit this city. Possibly since I was a teenager and went through a Russian literature phase. Definitely since I read and obsessed over Tatia and Shura's lives during the Siege. In fact, I actually re-read the book once tickets to Peters were booked! Either way, I FINALLY MADE IT

After visiting Suomelinna, H and I hurried to the ferry terminal to catch an overnighter to St. Petersburg. I can now definitely confirm to everyone that, yes, it is possible to enter Peters without a visa via Helsinki ferry so long as you stay less than 72 hours. I had absolutely no problems at Immigration, H was given a little for not filling in his form properly. But, this is not widely known - the girl at the check in counter of our hotel was a bit concerned when we said we had no visa. 

Passing by another ferry in the Baltic sea!

Having said that, check your info when you sail - I had read a posting on the website of our ferry company saying that due to an economic forum, the company would not be able to run their usual shuttle buses to the city center, and would instead drop us off at the closest metro. When we disembarked, a pair of girls at the company stand said the shuttles were running. They were wrong. When the (non-english speaking) driver stopped the bus at a place that I think I could accurately describe as looking like 'badlands' (H's comment - I was told St. Petersburg is a very beautiful city...this doesn't match what I was thinking), it turned out my original research was true! We had to hotfoot it out of there because, needless to say, it was not a touristy area.

But that was soon rectified! Here is Nevsky Prospekt, the main avenue!

On which the beautiful Art Nouveau Singer House is located. Note the red ship street decoration - we had arrived in the city during the White Nights festival, of which the Scarlet Sails is a huge event.

We eschewed walking along Nevsky for the time being and decided to stroll along the canals

which is damn beautiful

and has interestingly decorated bridges, as befitting an imperial capital.

And interestingly decorated wall inserts.

Chinese restaurants are everywhere!

I found this randomly lost chess piece to be quite Russian. 

 

For our midday meal, we headed to Shtolle's on Vic's advice and tried to get the chicken pie. They were sold out (!!!) so here is H contemplating our orders of salmon, meat, and cheese and spinach pies. THEY WERE DELICIOUS and we agreed that we would return to try and get the chicken version. 

Also, despite being VERY far north, it was hot! Hotter than Munich! H said it was the first real feeling of summer he'd had since moving to London. 

St. Isaac's, the largest Russian Orthodox cathedral in the city.  

But Peters isn't all beautiful Empire-era buildings - check out this Stalinist era edifice! It had a great frieze up the top.  

Speaking of which, here's a monument to Uncle Joe in the Alexander Garden.

The Bronze Horseman, monument to Peter the Great, founder of Peters. 

I was pretty happy to be there! After this, I spent what felt like...hours retelling the plot of that 600-something page book!

These are actually quite a common sight, confirming many things you think about Russians :D

The Winter Palace. Formerly the palace of the Tsars, now the Hermitage Museum, and too large to fit into one photo. 

Also part of the Hermitage Museum, I called it the A&F entry :P

Randomly left vodka bottle!

Boats on the Moika River. !$%ing beautiful!

Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood, with it's beautiful domes.

Looking back at the Church from the Griboyedov Canal. *sigh*

For the curious, I can confirm that there was daylight at midnight, which was both awesome and disorienting. It wasn't full midday light, more of an extended summery dusk, but definitely light enough to not need streetlights. While walking around and marvelling at the light, a guy turned to the side of the road and, to our shock, started vomiting. Then we realised that in any other city, it would be dark and we wouldn't have raised a brow at midnight chunders. 

Helsinki Day 2

In contrast to the European summer so far and the previous day, Helsinki day 2 was all warm winds and clear blue skies! Taking the advice of the couple of Finnish guys who took us to the bar and then abandoned us last night, we decided to buy stuff for a picnic lunch at the UNESCO heritage-listed Suomelinna Fortress.

Oh yeah, Esplanadi looking real purdy today!

Awww, in the words of Cher Horowitz, old people are so cute!

Fish market at Market Square! Damn, if we didn't have a ferry to catch, I totally would have gotten myself something seafoody to eat!

The ferry to Suomelinna took about 20 minutes and cost about €7 for a return ticket. I'm not sure why you'd want to buy a one-way ticket though.

We passed by some pretty cute islands...

to end up on another really cute and incredibly picturesque island!

Seriously.

Everywhere has amazing vistas.

Goslings!!!

Cygnets!!!

While eating our picnic lunch (which consisted of bread rolls I made by snitching things from breakfast buffet), we got to see this aeroplane taking off from the airport, its condensation trail splitting the clear blue sky.

The rocks under the water. Very furry.

H was extremely fascinated by this tree.

The island is actually inhabited by around 900 permanent residents.

And a wedding was taking place in this church as we walked by!

Although everything looks pretty so far, the fortress on the islands was constructed from 1748 by the Swedish as protection against the Russians.

You can enter the old fortifications

Oooh, spooky.

Oooh, pretty!

I'm looking the wrong way to get the view over the hills back to Helsinki!

But perhaps what I liked best was that there were places where you could hang out by the water of the Baltic Sea.

H said the water was not as cold as he expected.

He was right - it was the perfect temperature for feet dipping.

We eventually had to leave this idyllic island and after a bit of confusion from the instructions the concierge gave me to get to the port, we then boarded an overnight ferry to our next stop - Russia!

Helsinki Day 1

Travel time again! As you can see from the title of the post, I spent some time even further up north in Helsinki! With a population around 600 000, I wasn't expecting it to be the most happening of places, but with the midsummer public holiday on the day after arriving, it was even less crowded than I expected. Having said that, Helsinki was...interesting. I'm not sure exactly sure what I was expecting but it sure presented me with things I wasn't expecting.

Such was when I saw this giant demon baby sculpture at Kamppi. 

I was also surprised to find quite a few art nouveau buildings in the centre, such as this one on Aleksanterinkatu

Wandering around, I ended up at Helsinki Cathedral

and got this lovely view over Senate square.

I'm also not sure what I expected from the interior but I remember thinking that it seemed both quite plain and yet also fitting. 

What's this?! A Melb tram outside the Athenaeum and main station (which I kept calling Hauptbahnhof, cos I'm German like that).

After a few hours, H finally touched down in the city and as we headed out to dinner, we discovered the difference in advice given to us by concierges of different hotels. Lots of places were closed early due to the impending public holiday and we ended up at Kapelli, on the end of the Esplanadi. Word to the wise, while not a cheap place to eat, I can highly recommend their 3 course menu deals! The staff and kitchen were accommodating enough to substitute the main on one of the offered menus for me and I was totally stuffed by the end of dinner.

I was craving fish and had a mixed fish platter as entree while H shows off his Asian credentials int he background. 

My main! Reindeer meatballs! Yes, I ate Rudolf! Also, I don't remember what my sides were but they were delicious. 

My dessert - Kapelli tart. Filled with berry mousse and covered with meringue, it was terrible - I told H not to eat it. MOAR FOR ME!!!

Also, despite being at dinner for a couple of hours, it was pretty amazing to see that the stories were true - 24 hour daylight!

Check it out - 10:48pm and all that light!

It was fairly cool in temperature though, a not uncomfortable 19C or so. So here I am riding the seal fountain at market square.

It probably would have been even warmer and not so dark if it weren't so overcast :/

Since he hadn't been there, we wandered over again for H to take some photos at the cathedral which was completely abandoned except for two guys drinking beer on the steps. Also, daylight at 11:10pm. 

As H and I were chatting to each other in English, we were a little surprised when the guys got up and came over and started to chat to us. It was the usual smalltalk - where were we from, how were we finding the city...then it kind of changed. These two guys started telling us that yeah, it must be a surprise for us to come to this city and find it completely abandoned. They explained that it was the midsummer holiday and that as a side effect, many people had gone to the countryside to celebrate, hence the desertion. They then said they were heading to a bar where they promised there would be other people and would we like to see it? As I usually do when two drunk guys invite me off to bar, we trotted off along with them.

They took us to a building with an incredible gothic revival exterior and interior...then said it was nice meeting us and went off into a room to find their friends! Errr.....well, thanks for bringing us there! We ended up chatting with a couple of guys from the US and Iceland who I think were also very happy to find some foreigners to whom they could speak. Tourism bringing people together win!